Clinton's lawyers question Monica

Monica Lewinsky began delivering the evidence which will finally make or break Bill Clinton's chances of political survival yesterday: the first of three witnesses to give videotaped testimony in the impeachment trial in Washington.

The Republican prosecution team and White House lawyers have up to eight hours to question Ms Lewinsky behind closed doors in a suite at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, where she is staying.

Unless she reveals damaging new details about her relationship with Mr Clinton, most observers now believe that the president will be acquitted of the perjury and obstruction charges, possibly by the end of next week.

Yesterday was the 23rd time Ms Lewinsky has faced questioning by prosecutors about her relationship with Mr Clinton, but it was the first time during the year-long crisis that White House lawyers have been able to question her.

Both sides went out of their way to woo Ms Lewinsky by their selection of lawyers.

The Republican prosecutors entrusted their questioning to a single congressman, Ed Bryant of Tennessee, who is seen as a less confrontational member of the trial team.

The White House sent an even clearer signal of its own approach by delegating most of the questioning to two women lawyers, Cheryl Mills and Nicole Seligman.

Two senators, Republican Mike DeWine of Ohio and Democrat Patrick Leahy of Vermont, attended the session as official observers but did not take part.

The session began at 9am and continued all morning. Reporters and camera crews thronged the street outside in a vain attempt to spot the main players.

With the prosecution anxious not to court controversy by prying into sexual details of her relationship with Mr Clinton, Ms Lewinsky's interrogators are likely to focus on the obstruction of justice charge, which has emerged as the strongest of the counts against the president.

It was expected that she would be questioned about the return of gifts to Mr Clinton's secretary Betty Currie, and about her job search discussions with the president's confidant Vernon Jordan, who will be questioned himself today. The deposition of the third witness, the White House aide Sidney Blumenthal, will be taken tomorrow.

Full details of the sessions will only become public if the Senate votes to release videotapes and transcripts when it reconvenes for the trial on Thursday. It may choose to review the tapes in closed session rather than make them publicly available.

Before the session with Ms Lewinsky began yesterday, Mr Clinton's personal lawyer, David Kendall, announced that the president was taking legal action against the independent counsel Kenneth Starr, following a report in the New York Times this weekend that Mr Starr had concluded that a grand jury could indict Mr Clinton while he is still in office.

'We are filing today in US district court for the District of Columbia a motion to show cause why Starr and members of his staff should not be held in contempt for improper violations of grand jury secrecy,' Mr Kendall announced.

The New York Times story provoked indignation on both sides of the political divide yesterday. Senator Susan Collins of Maine, a Republican moderate, said it was 'extremely unfortunate and inappropriate'. A former White House counsel, Lanny Davis, said that Mr Starr had become like 'the obsessive Captain Ahab' in his pursuit of Moby Dick.

Mr Starr's spokesman, Charles Bakaly, denied that his office was the source of the story.

'We have no interest in interposing ourselves in the Senate's business,' he said.

Interviewed outside his Washington home yesterday, Mr Starr said: 'It is premature for us to be commenting at all on this, so we're not going to comment.'